Laura Glesby Photo
Hill South neighbors and city officials break ground.
Archidesign Group
A rendering of the future house.
Clustered atop a long-barren Howard Avenue lot, Hill neighbors and city officials grabbed their shovels and scooped up piles of dirt that will soon sit beneath a two-family, owner-occupied house.
That scene on Wednesday marked a pivotal moment in a yearslong partnership between the Hill South Community Management Team and city government’s neighborhood-development-and-housing-code-enforcement agency, the Livable City Initiative (LCI).
The management team’s Housing Committee has spent over three years collaborating with LCI to fund, design, and now build a two-family home at the vacant city-owned lot at 455 Howard Ave. The house will be the first to be built by LCI officials in conjunction with community members.
“It’s neighborhood driven,” said LCI Executive Director Arlevia Samuel. She praised the management team members for their work as partners on the project: “their tenacity, grit, and determination is the reason why we’re here.”
The site of the future building is a vacant lot that the city acquired in 2006 after the now-gone original house fell into disrepair. Once it’s completed, the house will be sold to an owner-occupant making 80 to 100 percent of the area median income (AMI), or $90,080 to $112,600 per year for a family of four.
Neighbors envision a responsive, attentive owner who will have a direct stake in the condition of the house, and the neighborhood, because they will live there themselves. Per the house’s deed, it will have to be owner-occupied for its first 30 years.
CMT Housing Committee Angela Hatley.
“If you own your property, you have a vested interest in this community,” said management team Housing Committee Chair Angela Hatley.
Hill South neighbors first formed the management team Housing Committee as they noticed their neighborhood changing: high-end apartment complexes were arriving, and landlords seemed to be investing less in the upkeep of their properties. “We needed to have a more cohesive voice to deal with the city,” explained Hatley.
The group began initiating conversations with LCI’s director at the time, Serena Neal-Sanjurjo, about strategies to bring more homeownership — and less gentrification — into the Hill. Neal-Sanjurjo suggested that the management team help develop a two-family home.
Laura Glesby Photo
Stae Banking Commissioner and former Board of Alders Prez Jorge Perez.
LCI, Economic Development Director Mike Piscitelli, and former Hill Alder, former Board of Alders President, and current state Banking Commissioner Jorge Perez worked to secure the necessary funding.
As Perez explained on Wednesday, they connected with Randy Salvatore of RMS Companies, which has worked to develop a five-building “Hill to Downtown” network of apartment complexes by Prince Street, Gold Street, Lafayette Street, Congress Avenue, and Tower Lane.
The city was able to secure $83,333 from Salvatore’s company for the Hill South Community Management Team.
In total, the Management Team contributed $173,567 toward the $690,000 project. The rest of the funding comes from the city’s housing capital development funds.
The lot at 455 Howard Ave.
Randy Salvatore.
“This is the perfect example of a public-private partnership,” Salvatore said on Wednesday.
Over the course of the next couple of years, Housing Committee members met regularly with LCI to decide on the building’s layout, design, and contractors. When the pandemic hit New Haven, the team was undeterred.
“We met outside in the cold. We met socially-distanced, masked, disinfecting chairs,” recalled Hatley. “Nothing stops Hill South.”
The team decided on a two-family structure. The future house will have a two-bedroom on the bottom, likely to be occupied by a renter, and a three-bedroom, three-bathroom apartment spanning the top two floors. Each unit will have a laundry machine. The house will feature off-street parking.
The house was designed by Archidesign Group, LLC and will be constructed by Concrete Creations.
A group of neighbors and city officials, including Mayor Justin Elicker, Hill South Management Team Chair Sarah McIver, Commission on Equal Opportunities Head Nichole Jefferson, and longtime Hill activist Johnny Dye, gathered beside a massive tractor Wednesday to ceremonially shovel the first scoops of dirt — and officially “break ground” on the project.
“This is a great day for the Hill,” added Hill Alder Kampton Singh. “This is a model. We need more like this.”
$700k for a 2 family - and someone making a max of $112k can afford this? Who's doing the freaking math? Who spends thst kind of money....in the Hill?